


Undertow

by Copperonthetongue



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Author is total pants at tags, Blue Diamond POV, Diamond Authority - Freeform, Especially Blue, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortal Space Queen haz a sad, Implied Blue Diamond/Yellow Diamond (Steven Universe), Little sisters drive you crazy, Regret, Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond Theory, The Diamonds did NOT take Pink's death well, Yellow Diamond sucks at emotions, Yet you love them anyway, forever is a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 06:43:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperonthetongue/pseuds/Copperonthetongue
Summary: There's a hole in Blue Diamond's heart where Pink Diamond should be and all the tears in the world won't be enough to fill it up again.





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

> So. This is me dipping my toe into a new fandom. Comments and concrit are love.

Blue knelt once more beneath a crowded canopy of thousands of rose colored globes, her hood down and her tear stained face tilted upward. Her eyes were shut tight, the roseate light the bubbled gems exuded falling full force on her pale azure skin and making her blue skin seem purple. Blue could see the faint echo of that rosy gleam from behind her closed eyelids. With her eyes shut, amidst that familiar ruddy glow she could almost pretend that Pink was with her once more. That she was still whole. She could see the youngest Diamond so clearly in her minds eye, lit up from within and shining like a newborn star. Pink once more radiating her endless supply of innocent joy and wonder at every single new thing she saw or experienced. The memory made Blue smile. Pink had always been so wonderfully vibrant, it had made the older Diamonds seem almost dull in comparison, or at least as dull as any Diamond could be said to be. They were the matriarchs of Gemkind for a reason, after all. Pink had been so full of life that it had often left Blue shaken and off balance as she watched her littlest sister move from one emotion to the next with a dizzying rapidity that made Blue’s head spin. Only in its absence had she realized how precious that sensation was. 

 

When Pink had first emerged Blue had found herself utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of her newborn sister, baffled by the force of Pink’s personality which was so deceptively contained in such a comparatively diminutive physical body. Pink had been dwarfed by the elder Diamonds, that much was true but Pink’s size had given no indication of her true power. Blue’s court believed her unaware, but she’d often overheard lesser Gems whispering that Pink’s lack of physical size perhaps indicated a lack of power, compared with the older Diamonds, Blue had never bothered correcting them. Why should she? They were ignorant, but that was to be expected of gems of their station. They were not Diamonds, and their foolish assumptions were beneath her notice. Especially since Blue had always known better., yet even if it had been the case, the fact remained that very least of the Diamonds would still be worlds more powerful than even the greatest of lesser Gems

 

The truth was that the size of a gem did not necessarily denote it’s value or it’s true strength, and in a Diamond the most important factors weren’t size but instead cut, color and clarity ....and the cut of Pink’s gem had been exquisite. Astoundingly complex and entirely without flaw from every angle, radiant and glorious iPink’s gem had glowed from within with a fire that had put Blue’s own to shame, and Blue’s cut was far from dull or simple. She was rightfully proud of it in both hue and clarity… but in all her long, long life Blue had never seen anything like Pink’s gem before and she knew in her cracked, aching heart that she never would again. Not even if she lived for the rest of eternity. Pink Diamond had been one of a kind, and there would never be another to match her. There was something oddly fitting in that thought, regardless of how it pained her.

Blue opened her eyes and allowed her tear filled gaze to drift to the alter where the shards of that perfect gem lay dim and silent in their gleaming crystal bowl. Five thousand years had passed since a sobbing, half mad and grieving Jasper had so tenderly poured those glittering diamond shards into Blue's trembling hands, and the agony of looking upon them had not eased in all that time. Not one tiny bit. It cut her as deeply now as it had that first day. It felt sometimes as if Blue would drown in her own sorrow, dragged down by the crushing weight of her guilt and regret and there were long spans of time in which Blue lost herself in those what-if’s, imagining what she would do differently had she the opportunity.

 

If only she could turn back time, Blue would hold tight to Pink and never ever let her go again. She would bury her face in her little sister’s eternally untamable hair and Pink would never doubt even for a moment how much she was loved, in both her anger and her joy, in thunderous sound or brooding silence. Blue would make sure that Pink understood that she didn’t need to compete with her sisters for them to love her, that they loved her for herself and they always had and always would. They would love her until the very stars themselves burnt down to cold ash and the universe collapsed in on itself. 

 

Blue knew now that she should never have made Pink deal with that accursed rebellion on her own. Pink hadn’t been ready, Blue had KNOWN that and yet she had still refused to go help Pink, and for what? What had been so important that Blue had forsaken her sister when Pink needed her? It had all seemed so important at the time. Paperwork, social obligations, geological surveys of potential future colonies…but what was all that compared to Pink? The ever present demon of her own guilt wrapped it’s thorny tendrils around her broken heart once more and squeezed until she thought she might shatter in it’s grip. Blue had put off going to Earth because she’d had a ball planned, She’d had a new Kindergarten to start and a dozen other useless, STUPID tasks to do and Earth had seemed so very far away, and so instead of simply GOING, she’d summoned a Sapphire. A sapphire who had been wrong.

 

Blue should have known better. Pink shouldn’t have been there by herself to begin with and Blue KNEW it. Pink had been so young, but her endless begging for a colony and responsibilities of her own had driven the three of them half mad until they’d finally given in to her badgering. They’d chosen a backwater planet and given it to the youngest Diamond simply to get Pink off their collective backs and get some peace so they could do their own duty as Diamonds. It had seemed a harmless plan, they would let Pink do as she pleased with Earth, it was a nothing of a world anyway, and if Pink succeeded she would have her accomplishment, and if she failed, she would learn from her mistakes and do better with her REAL colony, and she would be blessedly, wonderfully SILENT in the meantime which was all that had mattered to the three elder Diamonds at the time. 

 

It had never so much as crossed their minds that anything truly BAD could happen to their littlest sister. Even in their darkest nightmares they had never imagined that her radiance could be lost to them forever. No one had ever killed a Diamond before, Diamonds were eternal or so they had once believed, they hadn’t even known it was possible for a Diamond to shatter another Diamond, so the concept of a lesser gem doing so would have been ridiculous had it ever so much as crossed their minds. Even White had never so much as considered the idea.

 

When word of Pink’s shattering had reached her, the eldest Diamond had withdrawn entirely from her court to grieve in solitude. Not even Yellow had dared to disturb White’s grief in those first days. When white emerged again, it was no longer grief that filled her austere, flawless face….it was rage. Her anger had fed their own and their vengeance on the Earth and the Gems who had betrayed Pink Diamond had been a thing of staggering horror. When they had returned home, White vanished once more into her private quarters and Blue and Yellow had been left to try to navigate their own confusion, loss and misery alone and surrounded by silence and the yawning, empty spaces where Pink had once been. Where she should still have been. Those spaces would never be filled again. How could they be?

 

Pink had been nothing like Yellow, nothing like White or even like Blue herself. Blue had known that Pink was different from the very first moment the smaller gem had opened her bright, diamond marked eyes and the newborn Diamond had almost immediately begun carving out a Pink-shaped space in all of their hearts. It was a space that had been Pink’s alone, and now it was empty of everything but regret because Pink was gone. 

Blue looked back up at the canopy of bubbled gems, each bubble containing a gem that had never been allowed to fully awaken, She had taken them when she discovered that Yellow meant to shatter them all because of what Rose Quartz had done. Blue couldn’t allow that to happen, Pink had been so proud of her Rose Quartzes, the first gems she had ever created on her own. She’d adored them, so how could Blue allow something her sister had loved so well be destroyed? Now every last remaining Rose Quartz was contained here, in this room, this shrine that Blue had created in her time of deepest grief. Where she had spent so much of her time since the loss of her sister. For all Yellow’s impatience with her sorrow, Blue well knew that Yellow was no better off than she was. Yellow was simply better at hiding it, and instead of tears Yellow chose anger as a way to express her grief. Yellow wanted to forget…but Blue knew that such a thing was impossible. No matter how much Yellow might wish otherwise. 

 

Time moved differently for a Gem than it did for an organic and by that same token, time moved even more strangely for a Diamond when measured against a lesser Gem which while long lived lacked the durability of a Diamond. There was a reason it was the Diamonds that ruled their empire, so blue had never been able to really comprehend Pink’s adoration for the ephemeral organic creatures she called humans. To a Diamond, the lifespan of an organic was barely a breath from birth to death, in the blink of an eye they were gone forever, human life was so very fragile. Blue had once spent a decade contemplating a particularly lovely mural, and counted it time well spent. She was a Diamond, and Diamonds were (nearly) eternal. What was a decade when weighed against forever, and what was five thousand years of grief compared to the endless years that lay ahead?

 

Blue had nothing but time, yet the Earth’s time was running out and before the planet was destroyed Blue wanted to see it one last time. The place where Pink was murdered. The place where Pink had been so happy, and that she had loved so much. Without looking away from the shards in their crystal bowl, Blue spoke. 

“ Pearl, tell the Captain to set a course for Earth, immediately. “

 

“ Yes, My Radiant Diamond,” her Pearl whispered, giving the Diamond salute gracefully before quickly doing as Blue bid her, leaving the Diamond alone once more with her grief. 

 

Blue was going to Earth. It was time to say goodbye.


End file.
